And now the further doings of POTUS, Bronwyn Bishop, the world of Rosewarne and the world of chairman Rupert ...

Typically it was POTUS (that's OPTUS to you know nothing anti-Murdochians) who set the tone for the week with this message last night.

While the news about cyberlockers has fallen off the front pages, the fall-out from the Megaupload affair has been a virtual massacre of sites (Cyberlocker Ecosystem Shocked As Big Players Take Drastic Action).

The funniest thing? All this happened without the help of SOPA or other draconian legislation. Turns out that the authorities had ways of tackling the issue all along ...

Of course there's already been some kicking back (Anonyupload: faceless group steps in after Kim Dotcom's arrest) but the point is, there are already plenty of laws available in relation to breaches of intellectual property rights, and contrary to talk of the intertubes being the wild west, what users get up to is easily trackable. And if you get to a certain size, you become noticeable ... and steps can be taken.

Somedays the pond feels like making wildly defamatory statements about certain politicians to prove the point, but then again, even a minnow can cop a Meryl Tankard Reist, so maybe not ...

Meanwhile, what else is new in the world of the digerati? Well yesterday they had the splendid chance to see Bronwyn "Kerosene bath" Bishop shedding crocodile tears and maintaining the rage in Labor's mean-spirited attack on our most vulnerable.

Now think what you will of the proposal to remove high income earners of the 30 per cent rebate in relation to private health insurance - parliament has already rejected it twice, so it will be a tough sell third time around - but the proposal relates to ending the right to claim for individuals earning more than $80,000 a year and families earning more than $160,000 a year (New push to means test the private health rebate).

In relation to these figures, Bishop manages to produce some splendid statistical gobbledegook:

Peter Slipper had good reason to vote down this mean-spirited means test because 58 per cent of his voters are over 50 years old, 32,000 of those being over 60 years. 70 per cent of his electorate earn less than $50,000.

Oh the beauty of data. But wait there's more, a further frumious, furious, flurry of floozy figures:

The Government’s own figures show that of the 10.3 million people with private health insurance, more than half live in households with incomes of less than $50,000 a year and of these 3.4 million live in households with incomes of less than $35,000 a year.
These people will bear the worst of the pain.

And how will that happen? Seeing as these figures have actually nothing to do with the means test target?

Well there'll be a demise of regional private hospitals and the disappearance of visiting specialists, and the whole private system will collapse and we'll all be rooned.

And then the wild and woolly rhetoric disappears into the world of the north shore and shrieking privilege:

The private health insurance rebate is a moral issue. The Medicare system is a universal system. It only works because the private health system is an integral part of it and must also remain universal and therefore means test free.

The rebate was a policy introduced by the Howard Government to rebuild private health insurance participation after it was decimated by the Hawke and Keating Governments.

A moral issue! Would Bronwyn Bishop know a moral issue if it bit her on the Riverside nursing home bum?

Well can anyone punching on at the punch-drunk Punch out punch Bronnie?

Sure can. Come on down Lauren Rosewarne scribbling Sex scandals should not render a leader impotent.

Bizarrely she tries to give Newt Gingrinch a 'get out of jail' card in relation to his behaviour:

I’m not advocating Newt’s behaviour. Quite clearly he’s a scumbag.

Uh huh. He's a scumbag, but on the principle that everyone should be able to have their cake and eat it too, his scumbaggery should be completely ignored:

My position however, is that provided he is not committing any crimes, his personal life is entirely his own. Instead, I am suggesting that the obsession with moral character needs to be put on the backburner. That arbitrarily plucking a single personal indiscretion out and expecting it to function as a predictor of performance in office is insanity and that doing so has resulted in some very good politicians being ousted.

Well it's a noble ideal, and to break Godwin's law just briefly, it would have worked a treat for Adolf Hitler, who was inclined to vegetarianism, and a relatively discreet private life, mixing marriage (to set things right) and suicide (to set things right).

If only Newt himself had lived up to Ms. Rosewarne's lofty ideals, no doubt all would be well in the United States. But readers only had to reach the second comment to see Rosewarne's bit of trolling laid to rest:

The problem is these people run on themes of family values and moral judgement against others. These two things underpin their entire political outlook. If they can’t abide by the foundation of their political philosophy, it is correct to question their ability to lead.

Indeed. Glass houses and all that. Now hop into your time machine Ms. Rosewarne and go back in time to suggest to Newt that maybe, just maybe, leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton over an intern blow job, while fucking around on the side, was a tad problematic for a politician wanting to live in a Rosewarney world.

Of course Gingrinch dressed up his Clinton campaign as protecting the sanctity of depositions, with never a no mind for the sanctity of depositions to partners, along the lines of "oh no honey, of course I'm not fucking around". (Gingrich impeached Clinton to preserve sanctity of depositions).

There's plenty of fun at Wonkette about Newt, about him getting non-wife blowjobs during Bill Clinton's blowjob hearings (here), and how Newt Gingrinch committed adultery because American made him horny, and how in another place his infidelities helped him to understand how to impeach Clinton.

Of all the candidates to try to get off the hook in relation to personal lives ...

Of course private lives should be private lives, but when you run around celebrating traditional marriage while fucking around like a rabbit in untraditional ways, even blind Freddy (no disrespect to the blind or Freddy intended) might realise that questions will be raised ...

Take it away Doonesbury and click to enlarge:


And finally, since the pond asked the question of what was happening with The Australian, at last some news from the Murdoch front line in Whittaker in the firing line at News Limited.

Oh it's juicy, and it's not just the Daily Terror and the wretched Whittaker likely to see changes, it seems that the HUN still intends to roll out a subscriber paywall in March.

Bring it on. Oh frabjous day, callooh callay, the pond chortled in its joy.

Could this mean that Andrew Bolt is a Dickhead awareness week will now have to be re-titled Andrew Bolt is a dickhead locked behind a paywall awareness week?

Probably not, but hope, how it springs eternal ...

And now a reminder of your June awareness duties, provided you don't have to breach a paywall to pay your respects ... take it away First Dog ...

Gerard Henderson, and all the debates we don't need to have because a silent Gerard Henderson is golden ...

(Above: today's piece is so dull we offer up this image as a visual metaphor for the need for a little risk-taking, or a good distorting lens, or a little Photoshop, found at Kevin Garrison the CEO of the Cockpit).

There's nothing like dipping into the past to be reminded of splendid historical insights.

What a pity the world is now spared Gerard Henderson's insights into the Xmas office party as first unveiled in The Australian in December 1987 under the header Our Passion For Party-Going Is Such A Brainless Pursuit.

Yep, he was a desiccated prudish coconut of a conservative way back when. No doubt it was intended to be whimsical, in the same way that being smacked about the head by a dead fish is Monty Python whimsical.

Henderson is so conservative in fact that in Australia's Aborigines And The Rights That Went Wrong, he scribbled these immortal words:

Those Aborigines who worked on cattle stations were paid a minimum wage which was significantly below the award wage for whites. But station owners were required by government decree to supply food and shelter for Aboriginal employees and their families.

This was not utopia but the system worked well enough.

Sadly you have to chance on a fifty cent copy of Gerard Henderson Scribbles On (and On and On and On and On) in an op shop to discover such gems, bon mots and insights.

Yep, it was way better for blacks to keep on working for bugger all in a feudal system, than fall prey to the variation in the cattle station industry (Northern Territory) award of 1951, which thanks to the Sir Richard Kirby archives you can find here in pdf form or here at Fair Work Australia (and while there considering such weighty matters, why not drop in on Mrs Beeton's cookbook - All About Cookery).

Of course if you look at it another way, the discrimination and the abuse led to one of the most seminal moments in twentieth century Aboriginal history with the Wave Hill walk-off and the activism of the Gurindji people (and these days the National Archive seems intent on revealing online a little more of the data it holds on such matters).

Hang on, the pond is getting as dry as sawdust or Mr. Henderson, when after all, what's wrong with a little feudalism in the north. Sure feudalism isn't utopia, and it might be a tad difficult for the serfs, but it worked really well for Vestey. (Labour relations on northern cattle stations in pdf form)

Never mind, a little background of this kind is handy if you've been forced to contemplate today's offering from our prattling Prufrock, which is titled No vote at all is better than a win for the No.

It's a long and tedious summary of Australian referendum history and the difficulty in achieving any changes to the text, and the need for opposition and government to agree in trying to persuade the punters to vote for any referendum, and the likelihood that the current proposals for recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution might well fall foul of Dr. No, assuming that Tony Abbott decides that a win for No is yet another win for his brand of nattering negativity.

It leads to one of the most arcane arguments by Henderson for doing nothing that's ever graced an opening par:

It is always a good time to remove racially discriminatory provisions from the constitution. Except when such a sensible act might be defeated at a referendum for failing to obtain an overall majority and a majority of votes in a majority of states and there are unintended consequences.

So if it's likely to be No, then do nothing, have no discussion, have no debate, waiter bring me a closet, I feel the need to hide.

Funnily enough the pond had just been reading about how Ezra Pound's daughter takes on right-wing movement over name, and stumbled across this Poundian quote:

If a man is not prepared to give his life for an ideal, either the man is worth nothing, or the ideal.

Oh well, Pound was a right wing ratbag of the worst Hitler/Mussolini Admiration Society kind, and thank the absent lord he didn't mention anything about women being prepared to give their lives for an ideal, but do we have to follow our prattling Polonius down the path of doing and saying absolutely nothing for fear that a No vote might erupt?

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Indeed. Which gets us to this line of argument:

In his decision in Eatock v Bolt last year, Federal Court Justice Mordy Bromberg felt the need to address Aboriginal identity when discussing a group he referred to as ''fair-skinned Aboriginal people''. Justice Bromberg accepted that the term Aboriginal Australian applied to ''a person of mixed heritage but with some Aboriginal descent, who identifies as an Aboriginal person and has communal recognition as such''. However, he did not rule out the possibility ''that a person with less than the three attributes of the three-part test should not be recognised as an Aboriginal person''. This is the kind of debate that Australia does not need right now.

This is the kind of debate Australia doesn't need right now? Will it ever need it? Will there ever be a right time? Can Andrew Bolt just type what he likes, without debate?

Why that's the worst sort of attitude, the kind you'd expect from inner city urban elites, and their sanctimonious cluck clucking and tut tutting. Hush now children, the last thing we need is a debate about anything, even if Andrew Bolt initiated the debate, and so children bring me a broom and a carpet for thereto sweeping under so sweet silence can litter the land ...

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

Well actually it's always worthwhile presuming, as it was in the matter of fair treatment of aboriginal stockmen, and as it is in the discussion of the current constitutional amendment proposals.

Already some Aborigines, whose priorities do not focus on constitutional change, are being criticised for not going along with the panel's proposals. For example, on the ABC TV program The Drum last Thursday, leftist activist Antony Loewenstein attacked Warren Mundine as a ''Murdoch pet who hates everything about mainstream society''. This is mere abuse posing as analysis.

Uh huh, but it's good to see Antony Loewenstein calling Mundine a Murdoch pet because it's better to have mere abuse posing as analysis, than Henderson's mere hand-wringing, do-nothing impotence posing as analysis.

Not least because it seriously undercuts Loewenstein's credibility, and because it draws attention to Mundine's legitimate concerns - even if he did make his points to The Australian, and eek, here's a link to Warren Mundine to fight new race power in Constitution.

Yep it's a Patrick Dodson v. Warren Mundine smackdown, and the pond intends to stand well clear.

And while we're at it, it's a pity there's not some more hearty 'abuse posing as analysis' debate in relation to the Northern Territory intervention, and the effectiveness of said intervention.

Somehow it seems change will come about if everyone gets about on tiptoe, and is relatively silent and all will be well, or at least so Henderson thinks:

This sort of line of attack against critics, or any allegations labelling Australians as racist if the proposal is rejected for being too complex, would be counter-productive. The 1967 referendum on Aborigines worked because the political timing was correct, the proposal was straightforward and the extremes of left and right were relatively silent.

But hang on, Mundine can give as good as he gets, and maybe it's not a simple-minded matter of left and right, and maybe it's up to the proponents of the case for change to convince the punters that they have a modest set of workable proposals which won't deliver unintended consequences - of the kind Henderson moaned about in relation to aboriginal stockmen way back when, even if there were changes to the working practices of the industry that would have resulted in similar changes to the feudal employment of aborigines then fashionable amongst station owners, with or without the change to the award.

Change and debate, debate and change. Isn't that always the way?

By this kind of logic of the power of silence, Henderson should at once fall silent, and stop publishing his carping columns full of caveats and distortions.

Or at least relatively silent ... perhaps a column once a year at Christmas time reminding the world how hideous Xmas office parties are, and how drunk Australians get and what a terrible time Xmas is.

Or is that too the kind of debate that Australia doesn't need right now ...

And now, with another apology for suffering through yet another column by our prattling Polonius, with the pond proposing that debate on everything and anything might be needful and useful - even a debate about why Gerard Henderson exists - how about a debate on the Australian film industry, which managed to score a mere 3.9% of the box office in 2011? (here)

The next time you see an advertisement proposing that piracy is destroying the local industry, laugh in its face.

The industry is already destroyed, the American combine dominant and rampant, its tawdry and pathetic lies given free reign, its imperialistic twaddle routinely peddled to the punters.

It turns out that one feel good doggie show, Red Dog, with a box office take over the 20 mill mark, did almost fifty per cent of the unboffo Oz box office biz, and the other 43 films - count 'em, 43 - did the other fifty per cent of the business. On average that's like 500k or so a show, but actually it's just a few shows doing okay business, and the rest far away and out of sight ... (yes Griff the Invisible, we're talking about you, the invisible).

Screen Australia is an abysmal failure, but lordy, do they do a pretty graph or what:

Here's the pond's idea of a graph in relation to the film industry - click on to enlarge:

Ah well it's funnier than reading Gerard Henderson.

A flurry of Monday thought bubbles about Newt, Eurogeddon and localgeddon Craig Thomson ...

Another Monday, another Paul Sheehan thought bubble ...

Would there have been any chance for the header to have been given the gloss of accuracy?

US Republican voters in South Carolina, a conservative state riddled with Tea Partiers and 'anyone except Romney' conservatives reject the politics of past love ... as Gringrinch scores 243,153 votes against 167,279 for Mitt Romney in a country with a population of well over three hundred million (here for the figures).

Well possibly that's a bit too clunky for a thought bubble header - simple and wrong is always better - but if you want more of Paul Sheehan brooding about the ways of a woman scorned, you can toddle off to US voters reject the politics of past love. But remember, never ask why you don't like Mondays or you might end up sounding like Bob Geldof.

The pond much preferred Doonesbury's re-opening of the Museum of Newtisms (and more Doonesbury here):

The funniest thing is to hear Republican voters talk of getting back to traditional values, which presumably means the rip snorting, fornicating, hypocritical ways of Newt, because as Newt says himself, he has flaws, and what you see is what you get. A serial adulterer, and in the matter of Clinton, a remarkable hypocrite ...

You have to hand it to American politics, it's vastly more entertaining than a Paul Sheehan column ... though it is remarkable to see Sheehan dance around the grandiose grandiosities of Gingrinch ... so that he can land all his blows on the hapless second wife ...

Meanwhile, on the weekend, Mike Carlton struck a blow which resonated at the pond, when - in A field so scary that you can't turn away - he took note of the activities of one Chris Richardson, of Deloitte Access Economics:

On Thursday, the omnipresent Chris Richardson, of Deloitte Access Economics, was warning that Australia should brace for the "ugliest" of times if Europe can't sort out its financial woes.
"A GFC Mark II," he suggested.
Ho hum. Been there, done that. Two years ago, Richardson told us the federal budget was "buggered", that the economy would "unwind scarily fast" and that a recession was inevitable. Oh, and unemployment would hit 7 per cent last year.
Wrong, wrong and wrong. Let the good times roll.

Well the good times might or might not roll, but this morning the pond woke up to the sounds of Fran Kelly blathering on about the financial markets worldwide with finance reporter Sheryle Bagwell, producing a saturated with sound bite set of cliches which seemed to indicate that ...

... we're all doomed, we're all saved, Greece will fall over, Greece might not default, Australia might be doomed, or Australia might experience good growth through the year, China might have a bumpy landing, or it might have a managed landing, France and Spain and Italy might struggle through and raise the necessary funds, or they might crash and burn, and the stock market might be suffused with optimism in January but might well be suffused with pessimism in February, and whatever happens you need nerves of steel to invest in the share market or listen to her and Fran Kelly on RN (Monday finance with Sheryle Bagwell).

And so on and on. By golly, the dial shifted more quickly than you could say 'finance reporting' and hit the remote. Happily RN and Fran Kelly are now banished from the playlist. There must be better ways to wake up on a Monday ...

Meanwhile, Chris Richardson, as immortalised by Carlton, has been at it again, having a bet both ways.

Here's how you do it. Coin a neat word, then add a question mark:

The consultancy's latest business outlook, dubbed "Eurogeddon?", released on Monday says there are two main scenarios for 2012.

Oh what a clever portmanteau, Europe and Armageddon all in one. And don't forget the question mark, and the each way bet. On the one hand:

"Its (Europe's) mismanaged crisis means the euro could falter and that banks could go bust, sending shockwaves around the world," it said.

On the other hand:

"Yet it is still marginally more likely that the Eurozone muddles through this crisis, with sticky tape holding the euro together and ECB (European Central Bank) funding to banks helping to keep the market wolf from the sovereign debt door." (here)

It takes blather about finance and the markets to a new Gingrinchian level of grandiosity, but it means Mike Carlton might have trouble pinging Richardson in the future, because on the one hand he might be right, and on the other hand he might be right, unless of course on the one hand he's wrong, and on the other hand he's wrong.

Meanwhile, the outlook for Australia? Well it turns out what's most likely - as outlined in a report on the report at Bloomberg - that GDP will be up 3.6%, compared to an estimated 2% last year, inflation might also bounce up a little from 1.8% to 2.5%, and there's a good chance the Reserve Bank will lower borrowing costs by a quarter percentage point on February 7th, not that this will necessarily trouble the now recalcitrant big four ...

Eurogeddon? Let the bad times roll ...

Of course this overlooks whether Newt Gingrinch wins the nomination for the Republican party, Israel bombs Iran, Gillard loses the numbers after repeated displays of hypocrisy, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster lands in Sydney Harbour ...

Speaking of Gillard, it goes from bad to worse, what with grandiose Craig Thomson offering up an opinion piece to the Daily Terror today, under the header A potholed pokies path.

Do Thomson, Gillard and the Labor party imagine he's somehow rehabilitated, or that he presents better than the patent sincerity of Andrew Wilkie?

It was about this point in the Thomson piece that the pond spat cornflakes all over the kitchen table:

It is something that I and many NSW Labor MPs have been calling for - a comprehensive trial so that ultimately any legislation that comes before parliament is backed by scientific research.

NSW Labor? Scientific research?

Does he mean a slapdash humbug doomed to fail effort in Canberra will pass scrutiny as scientific research?

Oh wash out your mouth with Access Economics approved blather.

Hang on, hang on, Thomson does it again a little further on ...

The result this week is a big win for NSW Labor MPs who have argued this position strongly for the past year and a win for good evidence-based policy decision making.

NSW Labor MPs win for evidence-based policy decision making? As opposed to sucking up to Clubs Australia, Coles and Woolies, in mortal fear of losing their seats like their state ne'er do well comrades did recently?

Surely this must be a better approach than taking a "punt" to find the right solution to what is a very important but difficult area of public policy.

Put it another way. Big clubs, Woolies and Coles one, problem gamblers nil, and you can call that a big win for NSW Labor MPS ...

If NSW Labor go on winning like this, who knows, before the year is out Tony Abbott might be the new Barry O'Farrell ...

Who could imagine that anyone could make Tony Abbott seem like a viable alternative?

Trust NSW Labor ... drum roll please Rolf ... sure can.

Then again who could imagine anyone taking Newt Gingrinch seriously, apart from Newt and Paul Sheehan?

Take it away Doonesbury, see us out this sad and sorry Monday ... and as usual click to enlarge, or head off to Doonesbury here. It always helps to laugh as you cry, as you make your way through lashings of verbal spakfilla ...

In which Barney Zwartz explains the dangers of Muslim hardliners, possibly Iranian militants, and how this relates to a case of murder ...

(Above: Barney Zwartz and the photo used for his blog, the Religious Write, which also might cover moments when the Religious Write wrong).

Here's Barney Zwartz explaining on January 11th this year a possible cause of the murder of a woman in Fears held for Christian convert:

The husband and friends of an Iranian woman missing from Dandenong for almost a month fear she has been abducted by Muslim hardliners because of her attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity.

Here's Barney in the same story explaining Islam:

Islam, strictly interpreted, mandates death for adults who leave the religion, and there are many cases of Iranian converts being killed, both in Iran and in Europe.

The same penalty may be applied to those who seek to persuade Muslims to leave their religion. While there are accounts of Muslims who converted being beaten in Australia, The Age is not aware of any claims of killings.

Here's Barney in the very same story quoting an informed source in relation to the matter:

Pastor Danny Nalliah, of Catch the Fire Ministries, yesterday sent an email to his mailing list calling for "urgent prayer" for Mrs Ahmadi and her family. He said he had known the family for eight years and they took a leading role in helping Muslim asylum seekers find accommodation, jobs and household appliances.

"Through their love for these people some Muslims accepted Jesus," Mr Nalliah said.

Here's Barney sticking in a quick caveat in the same story:

He and Catch the Fire were the subject of a complaint that they vilified Muslims in a 2002 seminar on jihad, upheld by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal but reversed by the Supreme Court.

Here's Barney back on the case and the chase with Pastor Danny:

Yesterday, he told The Age Mrs Ahmadi "really stuck her neck out" in trying to convert Muslims and that her husband was sometimes very worried for her. He said he was not suggesting asylum seekers had abducted her, but that her zeal had come to the attention of militants, possibly in Iran itself.

Here's the police allowing Barney the luxury of idle, unproven speculation:

An Oakleigh police officer confirmed police were investigating her disappearance but gave no details.

He said the police were following several lines of inquiry, and confirmed that one possibility was abduction by Islamic militants. "We are treating it as a missing person inquiry but are investigating other possibilities," the officer said.

Here's the Victorian police changing their tune later on Sky News, in a story Abduction fears for missing woman:

The disappearance of a 46-year-old mother has stirred up claims of Islamic extremists targeting Christians in Melbourne, claims which have disappointed Muslims.

Police have rejected suggestions that Zahara Rahimzadegan, also known as Mandy Ahmadi, could have been taken by religious hardliners as retribution for her role in converting Muslims to Christianity.

But the accusations have continued from her support base, especially Catch the Fire Ministries.

Egged on by The Age?

Here's Barney offering the husband of the murdered woman plenty of space for an alibi:

Mr Ahmadi said he dropped his wife off at home in the early afternoon of December 16 after a "pamper morning" at Cornerstone for refugees, then went to the supermarket with his eldest son...
After school he took his youngest son to Chadstone shopping centre to pick up presents they had put on layby. He called Mrs Ahmadi and left messages several times.
On Sunday, December 18, he confided his fears to leaders at his church, CityLife, who said that because she had been missing 48 hours he should go to the police ...

Here's The Age reporting the actual outcome of the murder investigation in Husband charged as body found under backyard slab:

Senior Sergeant Iddles said a body believed to be Mrs Ahmadi's was found under a slab of concrete in their backyard yesterday after police questioned Mr Ahmadi...

...Senior Sergeant Iddles said that Ahmadi had made full admissions to the murder.

Here's the pond acknowledging that it belatedly caught up this story during an idle moment's browsing on the tubes, and catching a website documenting anti-Muslim bigotry in Australia: Australian newspaper blamed disappearance of murdered woman on 'Muslim hardliners.'

And now here's the pond - while acknowledging a hearty disinterest in both the Islamic and Christian religions - wondering at the same time how The Age can consider itself a quality broadsheet (in that peculiarly old-fashioned and soon to be lost forever way of matching quality to format)?

And wondering whether anybody else thinks that, for a bit of reporting on a most unhappy murder - surely the place to show dispassionate objectivity and some care for the facts of the matter - Mr. Zwartz's initial report is a fine example of subjective fear-mongering, including but not limited to astonishingly irrelevant red herrings, mindlessly irrelevant assertions about Iran and Islam, and the mindless quoting of suspect sources who turned out to be profoundly wrong?

Yep, it's another piece of reporting from the very same journalist who wrote another story several years ago which won praise from Pastor Danny Nalliah:

We were just absolutely amazed to read such an accurate report by the journalist Barney Zwartz. It seemed like reading the CTFM newsletter. (and you can get links and read about the CTFM connection here)

It was a story about a woman being raised from the dead, and here's how Mr. Zwartz began it:

The rest here, if you can be bothered.

It's the sort of story you'd expect to find in a provincial rag like Geraldton Guardian or if it was still doing the rounds the Melbourne Truth, back when Tim Blair worked for the rag.

Here's the Guardian getting excited about the story:

Yep, you simply can't keep a good religious correspondent down.

Where would we be without miracle cures, people risen from the dead, and Muslim hardliners, especially Islamic militants and dangerous Iranians with a taste for abducting people from Dandenong?

But what if you only saw Mr. Zwartz's first epic egg-beating effort, and never caught up with the reality check that followed?

And now to a media Sunday ...

It's a fire-sharing website?

Lordy lordy, the intertubes are ablaze, and people are sharing fire like the a bunch of extras in a Stanley Kubrick movie? Or perhaps as they did during the time of the great primordial sludge before the flint was discovered? No wonder they shut it down ... (and thanks SMH and Websites attacked amid piracy row, where would the intertubes be without typos?)

Meanwhile, a time of crisis looms for the faithful. You see The Australian's paywall cranked up back on October 24th with an offer of a three month free trial, and as fate would have it, that three month period ends in just a couple of days ... unless it's a kind of rolling free trial, and punters who signed up today might still be able to access a sample period of 28 days ...

That rolling free plan would be a nice way to obscure the take-up rate, but surely the first round of leeches and ne'er do wells must be reaching their use-by date, and will soon be asked to either dip on their pocket or depart. Oh the agony, oh the lack of ecstasy.

Here's just a few stories these philistines with redbacks in the wallet or purse will soon lose access to:

Oh that must whet the appetite, increase the desire to battle the redback. How about a little Catholicism with your breakfast?

Want a straw man argument with your egg and toast? Sure thing:
Yep, at a time when news is abundant, and there's no need to pay to access it, all a rag seeking to differentiate itself has got is its opinion-makers, but The Australian has done nothing to refresh its opinion pages, serving up the same ill-sorted stew of tedious conservatism, and phoney baloney controversies (as if calling someone a racist is risk-free, especially if it happens to be wrong).

Let's leave those fine offerings aside, and contemplate The Australian's navel.

There's been very little in the media these days about the paywall experiment. There was a little spurt when - during the same period - The Australian Financial Review decided to loosen its grip, and reduce the size of ask on subscribers (here), but News Ltd has kept the data close to its chest.

The last we saw turned up at AdNews under the header Online Traffic Drop Hits The Australian, behind a paywall there, but handily available at a fire-sharing site:

According to Nielsen figures, ‘same day' comparisons before and after the paywall launch show declines ranging typically from 15-39 per cent.

The Australian's chief operating officer John Allan told AdNews it was in line with what News Limited had planned.

"We expected and planned for that. When you go to a digital subscription strategy you absolutely expect to see a drop of that nature. Keep in mind we're in a free three-month trial period. We've been pretty aggressive in the first three weeks driving people to subscriptions. It means we've got a heavy percentage of content which is premium-only content," he said.

Judging by purely random and completely unsubstantiated by data or analysis or statistics, the premium-only content remains severe in the area of opinion, but varies in relation to news, with earlier in the day featuring premium-only content, and then dropping off at quieter times.

Today for example being a Sunday, the gold bar fickle finger of subscription fate features quite lightly on the front page:

Why the rag even offers up Brendan O'Neill for free, blathering on righteously about how Concordia provides no morality tale:

Our response to the Concordia disaster should be to sympathise with those who suffered, and then to go back to building even better, and bigger, vessels that might help to shrink our planet and extend our horizons.

A large cruise ship as a way of extending our horizons? Has he ever actually been on one? May he be trapped for all eternity in a ship of fools ...

But there you have it. Rightly the editor of the Oz judged that no one would actually want to hand over an email address to read O'Neill, and the safest way to treat his gadfly perversity was to fling it on to an open fire, and hope everyone would enjoy the barbecue.

And there's the problem in a nutshell. Anyone wanting an overdose of O'Neill can just head off to Spiked (warning - remove those Herman Göring-approved potassium cyanide pills from easy reach), or god help us, the Drum, though the new year has seen no banging of the O'Neill drum at the ABC ...

The world is saturated with opinion, and while peak oil might be coming along soon, there's simply no sign that we've reached a peak O'Neill phase ... and so the coastline is constantly threatened by thick, glutenous, gluggy, over-saturated, ruinous to health opinions, as if from a sinking cruise ship ...

So here's the question? Why has the media given a free pass to The Australian paywall experiment? Where's the data, where's the analysis? Where's the sense that with the three months trial about to reach its use-by date, independent analysts are slobbering at the bit?

Does anyone care?

In much the same way news of the Leveson inquiry and News Corp seem to have fallen over the horizon during the January silly season.

As usual, you have to hare off to the international press for reliable, regular updates on News Corp , or the Leveson inquiry, or the media more generally ... with the coverage of the Megaupload fire-sharing matter the latest example of ill-informed, breathless spinning of a story down under, already spun elsewhere in relation to Rapidshare and Hotfile ...

... and yet in none of those links to The Guardian will you find a request for cash in the paw, and with discreet usage - no more than twenty a month - you could do the same for The New York Times.

Which brings us back to the same question. With so much opinion-making, news gathering and reporting out there for free on the full to overflowing intertubes, why would you pay for the exclusive insights of a Christopher Pearson or an Angela Shanahan or a Frank Furedi? That's an unholy trinity even more inexplicable than the original trinitarian obsession ...

Well the holiday season is almost over - even the cardigan wearers are returning to the ABC, before dashing off again for the Australia day weekend - and surely some attention will at last be paid to the great paywall downunder experiment as its original period draws to a close ...

And now the pond is compelled to draw any stray reader's attention to the first significant day of action in First Dog's 2012 calendar (remember Andrew Bolt is a Dickhead Awareness Week - previously a mere commemorative day - begins this year on June 3rd, with perhaps the pond's favourite days falling on Still not Sorry Monday, and Carbon is invisible. I'm drinking it! I'm drinking it Thursday).

Make of it what you will, but if you ever visit Goop, you'll understand why hearts and minds are torn between Christopher Pearson and Gwyneth Paltrow ... or perhaps why sometimes even free isn't enough ...

Sometimes readers deserve to be paid ...

And so to the regular tour of the thoughts of the Pellists and the Jensenist nepotics, and never mind the fallout for pantheism or feminism ...

(Above: it's a conflation of Pellism and barbecue time, so it's time to know your acronyms and brush up on your ancient intertube memes).

It turns out that the long absent god might well be a bit of a snob, not keen on a beer, or a sausage, whether or not it has lashings of dead horse, as Cardinal Pell explains in his introduction to the New Translation of the Roman mass for long-suffering readers of the Sunday Terror:

Not surprisingly therefore the new texts are more formal and less like the everyday speech used at a barbecue.

And there you were thinking that a barbecue might be a spiritual occasion, what with the scoffing of the lamb:

Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccàta mundi. Beàti qui ad cenam Agni vocàti sunt.

Oh okay, if you never did Latin, and so never started off a BBQ with a hic and a sunt, here it is in universal English (Chinese and other strange tongues excluded):

This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his barbecue - or supper (if you must be precise and a tad formal, and refuse to accept that 'supper' might be confused with afternoon tea, tea, an arvo BBQ or even dinner).

Yes, the desire to conflate and confuse and cultivate mystery surges in the Catholic clergy just like it did in the middle ages:

They strive more effectively to evoke the mystery of God, while the translations from the Latin are accurate and precise, occasionally causing listeners to pause and think.

You can just imagine the average congregation pausing to think on the accuracy and precision of the Latin. As for striving to evoke the mystery of the omnipresent god?

Sorry Walt Whitman, did you get it wrong or what:

I hear and behold God in every object ... (Song of Myself)

Except of course in a pair of barbecue tongs, turning a nicely singed lamb chop.

And forget it William Blake ...

When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea

O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty ... (here)

Or as we used to say in pantheistic Tamworth, imagining that god was everywhere and in everything:

When the barbecue flame flickers alight, do you not simply worry about the amount of gas left in the bottle?

O no no I see an innumerable number of burnt lamb chops crying eat me, eat me, and never mind the carbon overload ...

All this nonsense about god being in everything, when really you can only find Her in a church speaking decent formal English and a precise, accurate translation of the Latin (and don't give the pond any of that Mel Gibson jibber jibber about Aramaic).

Moving right along, Cardinal Pell is full of concern for parishioners ...

Some worried that migrant communities in Australia and e.g. African villagers would find the language too formal.

Yes, yes, the pond too is deeply concerned about the way migrant communities in Australia and e.g. African villagers simply don't have a clue about anything, especially formal language, or accurate Latin translations.

Despite some difficult words (consubstantial), the texts have been well received there because they are closer to the liturgical language in their tongues. People can and will learn a new word or two.

Consubstantial? Yep, that'll have mass goers taking a minute out of the solemn mass to browse Consubstantiality on their iPhone. And how relaxed they'll be to discover its ...

... an adjective used in Latin Christian christology, coined by Tertullian in Against Hermogeness 44, used to translate the Greek term homoousios.

Indeed. Is there an attitude to texting, messaging and browsing in church, even if it's to bring you in closer contact with the accurate lord - way better than than Google Translate - and Her mysterious formal ways?

The pond especially enjoyed the response of a certain Father Reese, who truth to tell sounds just like an African villager:

... Father Reese, a former editor of the Jesuit review America, questioned the Vatican decision to use the virtually defunct Latin version as the basis of the new text, calling the result “terrible, clunky, mechanical and wooden.”

“We’re still treating the Latin language as a sacred text,” Father Reese said. “It’s not inspired, it’s not scripture. What we should be doing today is writing new prayers in good English. We want to concentrate on the mystery of God’s love and the resurrection of Jesus.” (here).

Indeed.

Well the good father might want to take the pagan Latin out of the church, but is it possible to tear the church away from the pagan? Not, it seems, if you're a Pellist:

Each tradition has developed a distinctive style and while the Roman rite evolved from Jewish worship it also incorporated elements from the best pagan Latin prayers: concise, elegant and rich in meaning and nuance.

Eek, a pagan prayer lover ...

Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee that thou be gracious and merciful to me, my house, and my household; to which intent I have bidden this suovetaurilia to be led around my land, my ground, my farm; that thou keep away, ward off and removed sickness, seen and unseen, barrenness and destruction, ruin and unseasonable influence; and that thou permit my harvests, my grain, my vine-yards and my plantations to flourish and to come to good issue, preserve in health my shepherds and my flocks, and give good health and strength to me, my house and my household. To this intent, to the intent of purifying my farm, my land and my ground, and of making an expiation, as I have said, deign to accept the offering of these suckling victims; Father Mars, to the same intent deign to accept the offering of these suckling offering ... (here).

Actually that's a little windy and self-interested, don't you think? A bit like Rick Perry and the Texas drought ... and as for the suckling sacrifice, that really isn't up to a little flesh munching and blood drinking ...

And as for those Chinese, or perhaps Indians, with their strange babble of foreign tongues, how about a bit of linguistic imperialism?

A single English Mass text, approved by all the bishops' conferences including the North Americans, is an important achievement; appropriate too because English is the new Latin, the new universal language.

Yep, according to its wiki, some 375 million speak English, and no one quite knows how many speak or mangle it as a second language, but even at best count it would be well under a third of the world's population, but that's enough to make it the new universal language.

Did someone mention Anglophile ethnocentric eccentricity?

After all, who cares what African villagers speak ... and what could they possibly understand of climate science?

Well after those revelatory insights, it was time to drop in on the Sydney Anglicans, and the pond was tremendously heartened by the splash on the front page for Raj Gupta's story Rethinking Parish Councils ...

At last ... a time to rethink parish councils and the way they operate.

No doubt a story about the role of women in the Anglican church, and the need to get women away from the stove, and cliched images of their role in the world, and out into the Parish Councils, guiding and leading the church and its men to a deeper understanding of the role women could play if given half a chance ...

If only ...

Gupta's actual opening line?

Every Parish Council has been there: you need a new stove.

Not a word about the excruciating banality of the image, not a flicker of post modernist post twentieth century irony.

Stick to the kitchen, Anglican women of Sydney.

And at that point the pond didn't have the heart to go on. After all, there are cakes and lamingtons and sponges and scones to bake while the Anglican men go on about their important men's business ...

And of course there's also a great opportunity to pitch brand new up to date images to the editors of the Sydney Anglican website.

By golly, there are dozens and dozens of them on the full to overflowing intertubes, right up there with the most advanced Anglican thinking ....

(Below: click to enlarge if you're a Sydney Anglican and you want to see more detail).

And so to the doings of relatively peaceful cultures, at least when compared to those pagan Romans ...

(Above: a problem since 1899, as revealed by the original The Punch in its cartoon. Click to enlarge).

The pond keeps a stack of old New Yorkers in the bathroom, in case of an emergency absence of loonery.

Flicking through a tattered back copy, it was one Chris Segedy of Brooklyn New York who brought a little light relief to pressing matters:

Christianity, it seems to me, played a central role in making Western Europe a relatively peaceful culture compared with pagan societies, including the "civilized" Romans.

Yes, and it culminated in the first and second world wars, with bonus holocaust. Now that's a knockdown relatively peaceful culture compared to those pagan societies. But wait, there's more:

... Europe's long history of Christianity has influenced its culture, particularly with regard to behavior and morality, and it's a mistake to ignore such a powerful aspect of the human experience.

Indeed, and its long history of warfare - whether the Hundred Years war, the Napoleonic wars, or the colonial adventurism from the Christian Crusades to the crusading ways of Christian Tony Blair - has been a powerful aspect of the human experience.

And wouldn't you know it. The New Yorker puts its letters up online, so you can read Chris Segedy in full here. So much silliness, so little time.

Even if there were a million monkeys typing a million ponds, only a thimbleful of the silliness available on the intertubes could cop a mention.

Speaking of silliness, this morning the tedious Jenny Macklin was all over the shop announcing great news for the clubs of Queanbeyan and Goulburn ... a trial of poker machine technology in the ACT.

Oh Labor party, you've done it again ... and come on Queanbeyan, don't be a bunch of spoilsports, you can make out like bandits and when the pond passed through at Xmas it looked like you could do with a bandit, ALP-led recovery (Barilaro rejects cooperation on pokies trial).

But I can hear you saying, okay, that's fair average silliness, but this is Saturday. How can we climb the Everest heights?

How about the solemn portentousness of the Daily Terror scribbling an editorial about the Wiggles?

Wiggles must get their act together, the anonymous editorialist intones, as he or she discussed the nation-wide trauma arising from one Wiggle replacing another Wiggle.

Ye ancient pagan cats and dogs, and not even a call for the Wiggles to be banned for their devastating impact on Australian culture ...

But wait, that's nothing, because you see Miranda the Devine has been out and about, cruising in favour of arch-yobbo Shane Warne, enthusiastically endorsing a jihad!

Shane Warne has declared a jihad against cyclists - and most motorists are with him.

Well we won't re-hash the saga of Shane and the cyclist, which is mainly of interest to those who think Shane Warne remains a celebrity because he could tweak a ball and a mobile phone.

But the Devine fallout from the fracas is all there in When will they stop pedalling nonsense?, and of course the answer is the twelfth of never, or at least until they stop peddling columns by the Devine as the best way to wrap your fish and chips.

Now you might think Warne and the Devine as co-crusaders in a campaign against cyclists is not even fit as lining for your budgie cage, but all that means is you lack a sensa huma and an ability to discover the shape of the universe in the froth on top of a cup of coffee ...

... perhaps Warne was so quick to hit Twitter with 16 tweets for his 630,000 followers on Tuesday night because he wanted to register his version of events before a less flattering interpretation cast him as a road rager.

Whatever the facts of the incident, it was an adept piece of damage control.

Yes never mind the facts of an incident. Who cares about the facts of an incident, when you can just carry on the road rage about bicyclists:

Even if he turns out not to be as blameless as he claims, Warne is right.

Yes even if he's in the wrong, he's absolutely right m'lud, and I refer to the principles established in the Mad Hatter's tea party. And now to maintain the mood m'lud a cartoon:

Now if it please m'lud, back to the Devine:

Motorists are sick of the silent two-wheeled menaces on our road. We are sick of the way they weave through traffic, run red lights, come out of nowhere and ignore road rules to suit themselves.

Yes, we're sick of it, sick of it all, sick of you, ya here, we're sick of everything, we're sick and we're not sorry we're sick, because we've had a gutful of being sick, and that's why we're sick and tired of it all, and when we're not sick and tired, why we're tired and sick ...

In fact, the only thing you might get even sicker about is the predictable bleating of the Devine, frothing and foaming like a demented, wailing, emotionally disturbed banshee ...

We are sick of the empty bike lanes that make already clogged roads impassable and the fact the bicycle lobby's power is disproportionate to their numbers. We are sick of their sense of entitlement and increasing aggression.

We are sick of the dangerous fiction that the road is there to share.

In fact, the road is there for cars. Bicycles are there only under sufferance.

And there you have - in a single snapshot - a portrait of the rude, boorish, arrogant, frequently verging on the psychotic - Sydney motorist, when offered a keyboard to express their feelings and attitudes ... rather than the more usual way of expressing their mood, behind a four wheel drive tearing around and tearing up the goat tracks that formed a foundation for the roads of inner Sydney ...

Next pedestrian you see daring to walk on a road, knock 'em down, and remind them that it's a dangerous fiction that the road is there to share, and remember, tell 'em Miranda the Devine sent you on your mission to create havoc and hell on the highway ...

Would it be a Devine piece without a spluttering final par offering up the heavy hand of the law?

Bike registration may be too unwieldy, especially for casual riders, but if guerrilla skirmishes between cars and bikes continue on our roads, the heavy hand of the law will have to intervene.

Now you might ask about the guerrilla skirmishes between cars and cars - like the car that rear-ended the pond's car last year - but we'll have none of that trouble-making nonsense from well known Trotsky-ites like yourself.

What we need is the heavy hand of the law, or at least the heavy finger on the heavy keyboard cliche of life ...

Meanwhile, it seems that Miranda the Devine and Harold Scruby are equally afraid of, and irritated by, bicyclists, as explained in Warne's bicycle rego demand belted for six.

It seems Mr. Scruby is with Warne in wanting some form of registration. Dear sweet pagan cats and dogs of Rome, Scruby and Warne and the Devine hanging around together ...

That would be the very same Scruby the Devine once called "a single issue zealot" while invoking Michael Costa calling him "Harold Screwball", as she moaned about anti-car activists and vegan cyclist Carl Sully (Fairness stuck in the slow lane).

Yep, the Devine has been scribbling about the evils of cyclists - in a fetid rampaging case of feral keyboard road rage - for many years, and the predictability is only matched by the banality of the thinking, and her capacity to provoke matching rage amongst cyclists. I guess it must help sell cockie-cage liner on slow days ...

So there you go Chris Segedy of Brooklyn, New York.

You might have your theories about Christians being better than pagan Romans, but we have Christian Miranda the Devine being benevolent, inclusive and embracing of bicyclists.

Sorry, you lose ...

Oh and you lose if you drive on Sydney roads too. Just remember somewhere someday you might well encounter someone behind the wheel with a pathological hatred of sharing the road with other users ...

I know, I know, anyone not living in Sydney will heave a sigh of smug relief. But remember the spirit of the Devine is everywhere.

As Chris Segedy sagely noted, it's a mistake to ignore such a powerful aspect of the human experience...

(Below: don't let the dress sense fool you. Those women are insufferable cyclists determined to ruin the Sydney road experience for Miranda the Devine and like).

And now for some ad hominem assaults on Katter, Court, Monckton, Riley, Galloway and Beard ...

(Above: Bob Katter goes the axe).

The trouble with a smell of an oily rag operation like Crikey is that all sorts of odd pieces can turn up like an oily rag, because any kind of content is ... well it's content, and never mind the quality, feel the width ...

So it goes with Bob Katter is a lot of things, but he's not a racist, a piece scribbled by one Anthony Galloway, "a reporter at The Northern Miner".

It turns out that Anthony is perplexed:

The perception that Bob is racist utterly confuses me. He is preoccupied with a range of issues — his anti-gay streak being his only inexcusable — but never has it occurred to me, and never has he given any indication, that he’s hung up on race in any way.

Indeed. Well the pond knows very little about the deep north - not since a friend warned that the fierce dragons that roamed the bush liked a snack of city-based elites before settling down for the night - but it took only a few moments googling to stumble across some farewell remarks by Malcolm Weatherup for the Townsville Bulletin:

Bob once famously went into bat for a then-National Party colleague who had described citizenship ceremonies as "de-wogging".

Bob couldn't see anything wrong with that, and proved it by describing his colleague's critics as "little slanty-eyed ideologues who persecute ordinary average Australians".

That was a while back, and if said today (outside the coward's castle of Parliament), could attract the attention of those familiar with the Racial Vilification Act. (here)

Now it seems most peculiar that Galloway, a reporter at The Northern Miner knew nothing of this, and had nothing to say about it in what is little more than an idolatry puff piece about Katter.

Galloway gets down to the breathless point of explaining how he can't keep up with Katter when the man starts talking about de Tocqueville or John Stuart Mill, or reciting a Henry Lawson poem ... why whole verses from the bard down under.

But, hey, that’s Bob. He’s a lot of things — and there’s lots of things to criticise him about — but being a racist isn’t one of them.

Hey Anthony did Bob ever recite Henry's splendid poem To Be Amused for you?

I see the brown and yellow rule
The southern lands and southern waves,
White children in the heathen school,
And black and white together slaves;
I see the colour-line so drawn
(I see it plain and speak I must),
That our brown masters of the dawn
Might, aye, have fair girls for their lusts!

And don't let him stop there Anthony. There's verse after verse in the poem about the dangers of the lepers (Chinese, Jap, the yellow peril, whatever), just as Lawson offers verse after verse in his other poems.

If you want a more extensive guide to the Lawson oeuvre, why not head off to the Australia First Party's offering Henry Lawson, "Nationalist writer"?

And sure enough down in the comments section for the piece, the first worshipful one led off with a reference to 'city-based elites'.

Let's hope Crikey didn't have to pay too much for the copy.

Meanwhile, over at The Punch, where payment for copy is some kind of socialist communist conspiracy - a breach of intellectual property rights of the Murdochian kind - there's a splendid oily rag offering from Matt Beard under the header The biggest bigots are the buggers who blame bigotry.

Now it would of course be ad hominem to point out that Beard received his tertiary education from the University of Notre Dame, and currently holds down a job as Research Associate with the Centre for Faith, Ethics and Society at Notre Dame, and he's Junior Editor for Solidarity: The Journal for Catholic Social Thought and Secular Ethics, but it's surprising how these qualifications inform his trolling ...

For starters, bugger me dead, it's really quite splendid to see a Notre Dame graduate sticking buggery in his header for a piece about bigotry.

Perhaps it's a way of getting people to head off to the Wiki (they'reeee baaaack) on Buggery, to note that the term was first used in English law in the Buggery Act of 1533, and it's been downhill since then ...

It turns out that in Beard's most peculiar world there's a whole series of outrageous ad hominem attacks on everyone, and it's shocking and shameful.

I know, I know, Catholic trolling is everywhere, but still this is most rich and juicy. You see poor Christopher Monckton is hapless and persecuted:

Take the controversy surround Christopher Monckton’s recent tour. In a widely signed open letter to the University of Notre Dame, Natalie Latter called for Monckton not to be given voice. The grounds for this claim being that letting Monckton speak undermined academic integrity.

Intellectual debate demands opposition - good and bad - and if the signatories to that letter are so confident of the scientific evidence, their time would have been better spent disproving Monckton than silencing him.

Indeed. Who would stand in the way of Notre Dame joining in the Monckton circus, but how strange that there seemed to be no plan for the University to invite robust debate and disputation with the Monckton circus ...

I guess it's better to propose that others spend their time disproving Monckton, but in discreet ways that would avoid any unseemly debate or a ruckus on campus, at least while the chief clown is front and centre in the big ring ...

And then there's the curious matter of the poker machine debate:

Recently, the usually well-respected Fr. Chris Riley spoke out against gambling reform. Rather than acknowledge his expertise as a man who has a wealth of experience in problem gambling, opposition called him a sellout who had traded his integrity for the ongoing support of a clubs Australia. Ad hominem.

By golly, that 'ad hominem' is handy, and covers all sorts of circumstances, even when a flock of Riley's fellow religionistas point out the bleeding obvious, including Tim Costello:

Costello told AAP this morning that Riley's support for the Clubs Australia campaign could be a conflict of interest, given the financial support Youth off the Streets receives from clubs. "The test is to find people who are independent, who are not getting any money," he said. (here)

Eeek, Tim, ad hominem, ad hominem, and just remember when a politician pockets some cash in the paw, it in no way influences their independent policy-making ...

And then, as if there wasn't already enough joy in the world, Beard jumps the shark and nukes the fridge in his passionate defence of Margaret Court:

Is Court unsupportive of gay marriage? Yes. Is she intolerant of homosexuality? No. She says just the opposite: “I actually love homosexual people.” But because she doesn’t agree with their agenda, Equal Love has made her a bigot.

Would that be the same Court who thinks gays engage in abominable sexual practices (as if gays somehow have reserved anal and oral sex for themselves), and believes gay relationships to be unhealthy, unnatural unions, as if heterosexuals have no claim on unhealthy, unnatural unions (don't get the pond started on its share of unhealthy, unnatural unions).

Would that be the same Court who told The Australian: "I help them overcome. We have people who have been homosexual who are now married."

Yes Court loves gays, provided they turn heterosexual. But the gospel according to Beard?

Court has offered particular reasons for her views: that man and woman, created by God, were intended for sexual union. Now, it’s one thing to take the bull by the horns and argue, say, that her theology is wrong, or that theology has nothing to offer this debate. It’s another to dismiss her as another homophobe, another Bible-basher; that’s bigoted.

Yep, it's bigoted to note the bleeding obvious.

Presumably the notion that Christian theology has also been bigoted these past few thousand years - in the matter of women, gays and evolution for starters - should also be stricken from the record.

And then in a fine flurry of foaming and frothing and inclusiveness as a closing argument, Beard shows the danger of too much trolling from an insecure historical base:

The empowered civil rights movements of the past may well have been inspired by Jean-Jaques Rousseau’s famous liberalist cry “I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it”.

Recently I was speaking with a state politician who informed me that he would refuse to deal with - or be in the same room as - those who were outspoken against his religion. Partisan politics has gone mad, and it will take a cultural revolution on the level of Rousseau to set things straight.

Actually it wasn't Rousseau, it was Voltaire. Actually it wasn't even Voltaire, it was Evelyn Beatrice Hall (feeling the need to write under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre, as women did in the days when Christians persecuted women for getting out of the house), attempting to capture the spirit of Voltaire and his response to a work by Claude Adrien Helvétius (yep, and the Christians gave him a hard time too).

Yep, it will take a cultural revolution on the level of persuading people to read Wikipedia if no decent history is to hand in the University of Notre Dame library before things will be set straight ...

Oh, and somebody stopping geese like Beard squawking and waddling about complaining of the injustice done to the likes of Monckton, Chris Riley and Margaret Court. If you lead with bigotry or silliness or special pleading, please expect a return serve every so often ...

And there's the price of reading smell of an oily rag offerings. No insight, but as Colbert might have said, a hell of a lot of geeseiness and truthiness ...

But there's an upside this day ... farewell Rick Perry, it was kinda good to know that goosiness has its own reward ...

Now how's that drought in Texas going? What's the drought monitor saying? Heard back yet from the Lord in relation to the Government Proclamation of a 6th August prayer day?

In times of trouble, even those who have been granted power by the people must turn to God in humility for wisdom, mercy and direction. In the spirit of the Book of Joel, Chapter 2, Verses 15-16, I urge a solemn gathering of prayer and fasting. As those verses admonish: "15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly... 16 Gather the people, consecrate the assembly..." As Jesus prayed publicly for the benefit of others in John 11:41-42, so should we express our faith in this way.

And he was in the running to be OPTUS! (Oh will that Rupert Murdoch gag ever run dry?)

(Below: by golly, it'll soon be Friday night, and time for a little six shooter action).